Green Desert
Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Nostalgia (1983) closes with a renowned travelling camera shot that gradually traverses the film space, tracking from images of Russian landscape in which the protagonist is framed to a final image of the interior of a Tuscan church. In the third phase of this uninterrupted shot, it can be seen that the church has no roof and is exposed to the influences of weather. The shot concludes with snow falling in a hybrid of interior and exterior. Another example of such hybrid style can be found in the Diesel Company’s advertising campaign Global Warming Ready (2006) which features images of spatial collage: for example, Mount Rushmore as a coastal cliff, and a Venetian scene in which colourful tropical parrots replace the ubiquitous pigeons. These very different visual effects combine a common theme: the association of two seemingly disassociated spaces in one place. The consequence of this type of catachresis is the revelation of specific socio-political problems that can be either complex, as in the example of the differing states of Russian and Western understanding of life found in Tarkovsky’s Tuscany, or half-serious, as in the example of the advertising campaign that wants to increase the global public awareness of environmental protection issues using shocking and attractive images of various ecosystems that have fallen out of balance. The theme of Pixxelpoint’s Green Desert refers to the controversial linkage of something beautiful and dead at the same time, the positive connotations of greenness combined with its absence in the desert. There is of course a way out of this quandary, though one solution remains limited to virtual technically-simulated reality. The second solution lies with the change of humanity and efforts to sharpen its sensitivity to the delicate balance of the environment that is not an object to be exploited but a complex and layered entity encompassing different worlds in the same geographic location, worlds that appear different to different eyes.